And though this was more easily said than done and the thought of murdered chiefs and starved babies troubled her occasionally, she did not really worry over it all as much as she might have were she not entering her senior year in the High School.

If life holds any position more important, any business more soul satisfying than that of being a High School senior, few people are so fortunate as to have discerned it.  Being a college senior is a highly edifying and imposing business, but the far greater advantages lie with the High School senior.  He is four years younger.  He has lost no illusions.  He has developed no sense of values.  He is not conscious of the world outside his vision.  But in spite of a smug conviction of superiority, the college senior has heard life knocking at the door of his young illusions.  He has moments of wistful uncertainty.  No, it is the High School senior who is life’s darling.

Lydia was not altogether an easy person to live with this year although both Lizzie and Amos realized that never had she been so altogether sweet and lovable as now.  She objected to Lizzie’s table manners.  She was hurt because Amos would eat in his shirt-sleeves, and would sit in his stocking feet at night, ignoring the slippers she crocheted him.  She stored in the attic the several fine engravings in gilt frames that her father and mother had brought with them from New England.  In their place she hung passepartouted Gibson pictures clipped from magazines.  And she gave up reading tales of travel and adventure, gave up Dickens and Thackeray and Mark Twain and took to E. P. Roe and other writers of a sticky and lovelorn nature.

In spite of the camping trip, Lydia saw little of her campmates.  Charlie did not reenter school in the fall.  Olga and Gustus were devoted to each other and, to Lydia’s surprise, Kent took Margery to several parties.

“I thought you liked Gustus best,” she said to Margery one Saturday afternoon late in the fall.  Lydia was calling on Margery and the two were making fudge.

“Oh, that was last year!  Gustus is too sickly for me.  I’m crazy about Kent.  He’s so big and strong and bossy!”

A little pang shot through Lydia’s heart.  But she was saved a reply by Elviry, who as usual was within earshot.

“Kent Moulton doesn’t amount to anything.  His father’s got nothing but a salary.  Gustus’ll have the brewery.”

“Well, who wants to marry a brewery,” sniffed Margery.  “If you think I’m going to have any old bossy, beery German like Gustus’ll be, you’re mistaken.  Kent comes of fine Puritan stock.”

“Your ancestors don’t pay the bills,” said Elviry, sharply.  “If your father has that extra money he’s expecting at Christmas time, you’ll just go East to boarding-school, Margery.”

“I don’t want to go,” protested Margery.  “I love High School.”

“Makes no difference.  You have common tastes, just like your father.  I want you should have refined tastes in your friends particularly.”